A Project of Animal People, Inc., 1992-2013
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2011:
MELBOURNE--“Embassy cables, obtained by WikiLeaks and provided exclusively to The Age,” show that Australian diplomats quickly defended the Japanese whalers whose ship Shonan Maru #2 cut the bow off the high-speed anti-whaling vessel Ady Gil on January 6, 2010, reported Philip Dorling of the Melbourne Age on January 8, 2011. Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2011:
BEIJING, HALIFAX--Canadian Fisheries Minister Gail Shea on January 12, 2011 announced to news media by teleconference call from Beijing that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and the Chinese Administration of Quality Supervision have reached an agreement which will allow Canadian sealers to export seal meat and oil to China for human consumption. Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2011:
Iloilo, The Philippines—“Let us learn to be responsible dog owners and once and for all, let us avoid eating dog meat,” pleaded Iloilo provincial governor Arthur Defensor Sr. through the Panay News after the January 8, 2011 rabies death of a 38-year-old mother of two.
The dead woman and her sister were bitten by a rabid puppy on June 22, 2010. The sister and three other family members received post-exposure vaccination, but the dead woman refused the treatment. Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2011:
CHENNAI–Disregarding national law prohibiting animal fights, Madras High Court Justices N. Paul Vasanthkumar and R. Subbiah on January 12, 2011 directed public officials to allow cockfights in Santhapadi and Modakoor Melbegam villages as part of religious rites commemorating Pongal. Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2011:
CHENNAI, Dehrudun–The first weekend of 2011 Pongal harvest festivals in Tamil Nadu, India, brought a drop in reported deaths and injuries in jallikattu, the predominant Indian form of participatory bullfighting–but chiefly because new rules discouraged many communities from hosting jallikattu. Relative to the unrestrained mayhem at Bunkhal village in Uttarakhand state a month earlier, that was major progress.
Where jallikattu proceeded, deaths and injuries continued, despite enforcement of the new rules by the Animal Welfare Board of India at direction of the Supreme Court of India. Injuries to bulls are seldom tabulated, but may be inferred from the counts of human deaths and injuries, chiefly suffered in attempts to tackle bulls. Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2011:
SEOUL–Water taps spat blood on New Year’s Day 2011 in Paju, Gyeonggi Province, South Korea, “just one day after some of nearly 1,000 pigs within a 500-meter radius of a foot-and-mouth-hit livestock farm were buried alive to prevent further spread of the disease,” reported Park Si-soo of Korea Times.
The quarantine officers who ordered the live burial claimed the water would soon run clean, but “many experts insist that blood from the buried animals will eventually contaminate underground reservoirs,” Park Si-soo wrote. Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2011:
PETALING JAYA, Malaysia— The arrival of 2011 in Malaysia brought into full effect the Wildlife Conservation Act, a sweeping update of 30-year-old previous legislation that includes under one heading the corpus of Malaysian law covering almost every aspect of human interaction with wild animals. Like most national wildlife laws, the Malaysian Wildlife Conservation Act covers hunting, fishing, capturing wildlife, protection of endangered and threatened species, and dealing with dangerous and “nuisance” wildlife. It also includes language prohibiting cruelty to wildlife, including captive wildlife, and establishes basic requirements for zoo management. Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2011:
MADRID--U.S. State Department messages published on January 3, 2011 by WikiLeaks and the leading Spanish newspaper El Pais disclose that U.S. diplomats in negotiation with senior Japanese officials entertained the possibility of asking the Internal Revenue Service to revoke the nonprofit status of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.
The State Department messages also confirm the belief widespread among whale conservationists that current White House policy seeks as a first priority to lower the profile of confrontation with Japan over whaling. Read more
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November/December 2010:
PETALING JAYA, Malaysia–Anson Wong Keng
Liang, 52, on November 6, 2010 saw the
Malaysian High Court increase to five years a
six-month sentence he received from Selang
Sessions Court on September 6 for smuggling boa
constrictors.
Initially trafficking in reptiles via the now
defunct Bukit Jambul Reptile Sanctuary, Wong was
called by Bryan Christy “the most important
person in the international reptile business” in
Christy’s 2008 exposé book The Lizard King.
Arrested in Mexico City in 1998, Wong was
extradited to the U.S., where he served a a
71-months prison term after pleading guilty to
40 counts of smuggling, conspiracy,
money-laundering, and other violations of
wildlife laws.